


Crystal Spires

by aetherGeologist, escaflowery, liasangria



Series: Between Crystal Spires and the Obsidian Deep [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cults, F/F, F/M, Hemospectrum Shift, Horrorterrors - Freeform, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Quadrant Confusion, Quadrant Vacillation, Slow Burn, Steampunk, troll lifespans are all the same because the author says so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-21 19:37:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17648621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetherGeologist/pseuds/aetherGeologist, https://archiveofourown.org/users/escaflowery/pseuds/escaflowery, https://archiveofourown.org/users/liasangria/pseuds/liasangria
Summary: The Megido line has ruled over the Alternian-colonized planet of Carnelia for over one hundred sweeps.But trouble is brewing.Bigger trouble than simple lowblood uprisings.





	1. Blue against Red

**Author's Note:**

> art by aethergeologist and escaflowery!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art in this chapter is by escaflowery~ 
> 
> This chapter beta'd by thescyfychannel <3

_ “That’s definitely a dead body,” _ Nepeta tells you, as if you weren’t already aware. 

The troll’s corpse—what was once a ceruleanblood but is now so much carrion—floats grotesquely in the rusty sea. The current causes it to occasionally bump into one of the wooden posts holding the dock up. The smell rising from it, mingling with the ever-present dead fish and old garbage stench of the harbor, is enough to turn even your stomach. 

You swallow back bile. “It’s not anyone you know, is it?” 

_ “Nope!” _ she chirps, far more cheerfully than you feel the situation warrants. 

The screen on your ancient palmhusk is cracked enough to refract rainbows of color across the surface. A fracture runs right across where Nepeta’s sweet face is. You refrain from running your thumb over the screen. All attempts to repair it have only resulted in further cracking, so you’ve learned to leave it be. 

Nepeta’s voice comes out broken and staticky. This close to the ocean, you won’t be able to use the device for long. 

_ “Did they drown?” _ Nepeta asks. 

“I don’t think so,” you reply. You’re not about to actually touch the thing. Your skin crawls at the very thought. 

Blue blood streams improbably from the corpse’s eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. You’re no expert, but you’re fairly sure something that’s been dead for a while shouldn’t have flowing blood still. Their expression is frozen into a rictus of abject horror. 

You hold the palmhusk screen-outwards again, so Nepeta can get a better look. 

“I haven’t seen anything like this before,” you say. “Have you?” 

_ “You mean bleeding out from the face?”  _

“No, I mean…” you trail off, not really sure how to put it. The body looks  _ wrong _ somehow. Like it’s missing something vital. Something far beyond the obvious fact it’s not alive anymore. 

A hiss of static spews out of your palmhusk, cutting off part of Nepeta’s next words.  _ “—and those games can get pretty rough! Maybe they got hit with a psionic blast?”  _

You nod, and then remember she can’t see you when you’re pointing the screen at a corpse. 

_ “Equius?”  _ she prompts, when you don’t respond.

“Maybe,” you say, turning the device back towards you. Quick movements make the visual connection wobble, and you have to wait for the image to resolve itself.

You weren’t exactly expecting to see a dead body turn up in the wake of the steam-powered fishing boat you’d just finished servicing. It had been something of an unpleasant surprise to see it bobbing to the surface in the grim light of morning, and your night had been going so well, too. 

In shock, you’d done the first thing that came to you: called your moirail. 

Normally you wouldn’t be so shaken by a corpse, but there’s something incredibly unsettling about this particular one. Nepeta didn’t seem to think there was anything unusual about it, but then again, the visual connection through your palmhusk was tenuous at best. 

Perhaps the true horror of it simply couldn’t translate over video. 

Nepeta is still talking, and you let the soothing tones of your moirail’s voice wash over and ground you, without really taking in what she’s saying.

There’s an ominous crackling, and you lose the signal for a moment. The palmhusk is heating up in your hand, and you know you’ll have to end the call soon, or it will be irreparably damaged. 

Your eyes are drawn down to the body again, and you suppress a shudder. 

You’ll have to call in the drones to remove it. 

Or, you could do as Nepeta suggests; leave and pretend you never saw it. Tempting as it is, you’re fairly certain your conscience won’t allow for that. The sopor you have is getting too thin to suppress both daymares  _ and _ guilt, and you won’t have enough credits to get anything stronger for another perigee. 

Maybe she’s right. Maybe it was simply a FLARP game that got out of hand. 

This is partly why you called Nepeta. Two of her other quadrantmates are a cerulean and a teal, both of whom FLARP. Maybe there had been a...raid or whatever it’s called. 

You say as much and Nepeta laughs. The sound is music to your ears. 

Maybe you just wanted to hear your moirail’s voice after such a gruesome discovery.  _  
_

You’re low enough on the Hemospectrum to automatically be a suspect for murder, since a cerulean outcastes you, and the automonton drones don’t care for excuses. Having an oliveblood quadrantmate who can vouch for you is probably another reason you called her, if you’re being honest with yourself. 

You wonder briefly if this was someone Vriska or Terezi knew, or possibly even their doing. But you dismiss the thought. It doesn’t matter now. 

It would behoove you to call the drones soon.

You bid Nepeta goodbye and disconnect.  _  
_

There’s a tall wooden post back at the waterfront that’s rigged with a wire which connects to similar posts all over the city. When the wire is tugged, it sends a signal to the nearest drone station. It’s colloquially known as a “shoutpole,” after the punctuation. You, however, refer to it as an “exclamation station,” like a civilized troll. 

You tug on the wire and wait anxiously for the drones to appear. 

Soon enough, there’s a rumbling like distant thunder, and it raises the hair all over your body; a conditioned flight-response. Three large, mechanical automatons powered by steam and gears touch down on the dock with a clanking thud that reverberates through your bones. 

The steam clears away, and the red light of dawn glints off their polished metal exoskeletons. You take a small moment to admire the craftsmanship, even though the mere sight of them still strikes animalistic fear into your bloodpusher. These are only but a crude imitation of the high-tech models the rest of the empire employs. You’d love to get your claws on a decommissioned drone one of these days, if only to reverse-engineer it.  _  
_

Here, on Carnelian, where complicated electronics break down quickly for unknown reasons, your people had to improvise. 

Trolls are nothing if not adaptable, however.  _  
_

These drones have rudimentary artificial intelligence programs that need replacing every other perigee or so. They only understand the most basic of speech, so you lead them to the harbor and gesture to where the body floats. 

The cerulean’s corpse still bleeds into the water, and you imagine, for a moment, a planet where the colors are reversed, blue seas and red blood, before you shake your head. Ridiculous fancies.

Once the drones remove the body, you decide to stop somewhere before heading home for the day. 

*******

 

Nepeta’s tea shop, the Little Cube, is nestled between a clothing boutique and a fancy bakery in a reasonably middle-high-class district—it’s mostly jades, olives, and the occasional lime here and there. 

The shop is cat-themed, like everything else your moirail touches, and there’s a certain charm in how unabashedly frilly it is. Sweet, innocent, to be sure, but like frosting covering a cake baked with arsenic, this shop holds some dangerous secrets. 

Or more like dangerous  _ Serkets _ . 

Even if she is not exactly your type, you can admit that Vriska Serket cuts a striking figure. She’s tall and gangly and dangerous,  _ and _ , if the rumors are to be believed, she runs with a notorious circle of criminals. 

You frown at the thought of Nepeta tangling with someone so precarious, but you also know that once Nepeta has made up her mind, there’s no changing it. 

Which is why she runs this tea shop. And why she employs Vriska. 

And also why Vriska is part of her...quadrant...tangle...thing. You don’t approve. Then again, you don’t exactly have any room to talk, as the only quadrant you have filled is your diamond. 

You’re not sure on the specifics of where Serket fits in. Somewhere between Pyrope and Maryam is your guess. 

Nepeta is flush as flush can be for Pyrope—Terezi. And pitch for Maryam—Kanaya. Both of whom work there, as well. 

From what you can tell, Kanaya and Serket are flush, and Terezi and Kanaya are…also flush. You don’t really understand it, and mostly try to ignore it. Terezi and Serket seem to be in some kind of quadrant-defying vacillation (much like a pair of seadwellers you have the misfortune of knowing). 

That sort of thing, that quadrant-smearing, is becoming more common these days. And if you didn’t love Nepeta with all the pale chamber of your bloodpusher, you’d be judging her immensely. 

You might be judging her immensely anyway, if you’re being honest with yourself. 

But you let pity cloud your judgement—in matters of the heart, anyway. Sometimes you think you’re too soft for your own good. 

You enter the shop, ignoring the scandalized looks that the last patrons before closing time—a pair of genteel jadebloods—give your soot-marked leather coveralls and goggles. 

It’s Kanaya behind the counter, thankfully. The only (questionably) sane member of your moirail’s… quadrant cluster. She’s fastidiously wiping down the glossy, wooden countertop with a tea towel. There’s a glass case of various cat-shaped pastries next to the register. 

“She’s in the back,” Kanaya says, without even looking up. 

You didn’t even have a chance to open your mouth. Rather than start now, you nod, once, and shuffle behind the counter and through the swinging door. 

The “back” is where the more interesting things happen,since the shop itself, while a legitimate business, acts as a front for some of the shadier happenings that occur in the capital. One such shady happening is lounging with her feet propped on the table and the chair tilted back to a dangerous degree. Vriska looks quite incongruous in a pink, ruffled apron with a stylized cat on it. 

The other shady happening is licking what looks like red chalk off of the table. Terezi Pyrope also looks incongruous in a pink apron, but somehow, it suits her better than it does Vriska—or possibly she just doesn’t care what she looks like enough to be uncomfortable with it—one apparent benefit to her lack of sight. 

She stops her slobbering and brings her head up, giving a loud sniff. The weak solar crystal dangling on a string above the table reflects eerily off her red glasses. 

“Mister Blueberry!” she cackles, showing every one of her sharp, pointy fangs. 

You give one short, awkward nod, and then stop yourself when you remember she can’t see it. 

“Miss Pyrope,” you greet. 

Serket’s chair lands on all four feet with a thunk. She shows her fangs in something that’s too threatening to be a smile. “Evening, Zahhak,” she says. 

“Miss Serket.” 

Just then, the door to the storage basement creaks open, and there’s your moirail, swooping in like an angelic being to save you from this horrible social interaction. 

She lets the bag of ground-beetle flour hit the floor with a powdery thwump and flies into your arms with a delighted shriek. You catch her with the ease of long practice. She’s small, but solid, and a lot heavier than she looks, but you, of course, have your lowblood strength, and therefore have no problem hefting her. She fits against you like you were made for each other. According to the principles of Serendipity, perhaps you are. 

She snuggles into your arms, purring contentedly. Your answering purr is deeper and rougher, but no less genuine. 

“Ugh. Pale-marrieds,” Vriska says, wrinkling her nose at your display. 

Nepeta turns her head and sticks her tongue out at the cerulean. 

 

 

“I think they’re adorable,” Terezi says. “Just because you’ve sworn off all diamonds after that disaster with Vantas, doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t live vicariously!” 

Then the tealblood grins far too wide and reaches out her hand to unerringly slap Vriska on the posterior. “But we can leave the diamond duo some privacy for a few minutes,” Terezi continues. Vriska retaliates by putting Terezi in a headlock, and they shuffle out the door, still tangled up that way. “No piles!” Terezi calls back at you. 

Once the door swings shut, Nepeta slides out of your arms and lands on the floor. She cocks her head and looks at you in that way of hers that always makes you feel like you’re transparent. 

“What is it?” she says, without preamble. This close, you can see how her irises have filled with olive. It is another reminder of how you’ve all grown up. 

You gaze fondly down at her. “I’m perhaps a bit spooked by what I found earlier.” 

The dead body of the ceruleanblood drifts up in your memory, just like it had drifted up from the crimson sea. It’s not that you’d never seen a dead body before. On the contrary, it wasn’t all that uncommon to find one just laying around, considering your species’ propensity for violence in everything it did. 

But there was something…off about this one. Something unsettling. 

You shake your head to clear it. 

“Well, finding a corpse would turn anyone’s stomach!” Nepeta chirps. “They tend to stink, after a while,” she adds, wrinkling her nose. 

You say nothing, only nod. It wasn’t the smell that was so disturbing. 

“You just sit your tail down and I’ll bring you some cham-meow-lile tea!” Nepeta tells you, slipping into the cat puns of her youth. The familiarity of it is grounding, and you settle down on the wooden chair that Vriska had recently vacated. It groans under your not-inconsiderable weight. 

Nepeta disappears into yet another room and emerges with a tray of steaming cakes, a teapot, and two cups. 

She pours you some tea, and sets a cake in front of you. It’s poppy seed and honey, your favorite. 

“I have another daylight job this afternoon,” you say, after swallowing your cake and wiping your mouth with a napkin. 

Nepeta nods in understanding. “With Ampora and Peixes,” she says. It’s not a question, because she already knows the answer. You nod anyway. 

Your dealings with those two seadwelling criminals is a sore subject for you: you  _ want _ to be on the proper side of the law, you really, really do, but things are tight, and you need the credits. 

Nepeta sits beside you, a quiet, comforting presence, doodling on a piece of scratch paper with one of Terezi’s sticks of chalk as you eat another poppy seed and honey cake, and finish up your tea. 

A particularly pale kind of warmth suffuses you as you bask in the companionable silence and peace your moirail brings you. The tea itself is bracingly hot and it warms you physically, starting from your core. 

Soon enough, you feel like you can face the world again. You bid Kanaya, Terezi, and Vriska a polite farewell when you pass them as Nepeta walks you to the door of the shop. 

She sends you on your way with one last nuzzle and a cheek-pap. Public displays of affection are incredibly uncomfortable for you, and you suspect Nepeta performs them deliberately, just to see you turn blue. 

Nevertheless, you feel lighter than you have in a perigee, like you just might be ready to face whatever the universe might throw at you. 

 

*******

 

The universe is apparently feeling up for a fight, however.

You amble along down the well-kept streets as the full light of the red midday sun creeps over the tops of the buildings, bathing you in light. It’s not the violent radiation of the sun that your spawning planet, Alternia, orbits, but it does get awfully bright for a species that’s nocturnal. Enough to make you glad you’re wearing your goggles, anyway. 

You’ve just reached the corner where the neighborhood changes from greens to blues (as evidenced by the bits of rubbish and overall shabbier appearance of the buildings) when, for the second time that morning, you hear a low rumble that throbs through your veins and sends a chill up your spine. 

Drones. 

A shadow falls over you, and you look up: what you see nearly stops your bloodpusher cold. 

You scramble backwards, and plaster yourself against the side of a ramshackle hivestem as half dozen drones land in the street. You’re hyperaware of the crumbling plaster beneath your hands, and the fact you have nothing to defend yourself with. 

In your panic, your fingers crush through the plaster of the wall. The sound causes all the drones’ heads to turn as one. 

Right towards you. 

Their visual sensors (Carnelian models have dark lenses set into goggle-like structures on their heads, a fact that normally you would not be so terrified to recount) focus directly on you. For the briefest moment, you think you see a flash of violet in that dark glass. 

You should stay still. You’ve done nothing wrong. 

But every instinct you have is screaming at you to run. 

So you do. 

You break away from the wall and dart down an alley, jumping over garbage as you go. 

From the groaning clanks behind you, the drones are giving chase.    
  


You leap up and grab hold of a low wall and heave yourself over it. On the other side, you hit the ground hard, but you’re determined to keep going. 

Behind you, the drones simply burst through the wall and you almost curse. 

A left turn, and then another left, over another wall, down an alleyway, and then you take a right. You’re running blind right now and your limbs ache in that familiar way they do when they’re being overworked, but sheer adrenaline keeps you going. 

There’s only one panicked thought in your pan right now: lead them away from Nepeta. 

You cut through a small garden that’s growing various highly illegal narcotic fungi, holding your breath while you do, and scale another wall. 

The salt tang of the sea hits your nostrils and it’s awful, but if you can get the drones to change their target to a lower caste troll, they’ll leave you alone. 

The sea is in sight, now. The smell of dead fish and rotting kelp and refuse increases the closer you get to the shore. 

You duck into an alcove, the doorway to a hivestem and listen for several long moments. 

Nothing. 

You’ve lost them. 

The sigh of relief that rips itself from your throat comes out hoarse and shuddery. You slump against the door for a second, then push away. 

You’re now quite far from your own home, and even further off your planned schedule. There’s no way you’d be able to go back and get a few hours of rest before having to meet up with Peixes and Ampora here at the waterfront. 

You might as well stay where you are. 

The shadow of the small alcove is barely enough to hide from the sun in. You’ve just settled in for a long, sleepless wait when you hear that mechanical rumbling again. But there’s nothing to be seen. It’s almost worse that you can only hear them. You don’t know where they are. 

The hair on the back of your neck prickles, and, following an instinct you don’t quite understand, you throw yourself into the street just as the hivestem door explodes outward. 

Six drones march through the hole in the wall as plaster rains down around you. 

This time, you _ definitely _ note a violet glow in their visual input sensors. 

But you don’t have time to ponder it, because you’re too busy trying not to get caught when they eject weighted nets right at you. 

They’re not trying to cull you. They’re trying to capture you. Somehow, you think that might be worse.    
  


In your haste to evade the drones, you don’t realize quite how close you’ve gotten to the water. 

You pick up a barrel full of refuse and hurl it at the nearest one. The barrel hits it in an explosion of splinters and garbage, and the drone is, naturally, unphased. 

Two more converge on you, pushing you back out onto the pier, and you find yourself trapped between six rogue drones and the red sea. 

You’re just considering taking your chances in the filthy water when you hear a horrible, rusty clanking—a noise that would usually set your teeth on edge, were it not for the way it’s temporarily drowning out that mechanical rumbling—and a shadow blocks out the sun.

A horrible, rusty clanking.  A  _ familiar _ horrible, rusty clanking, even. You look up. 

“Hi Zahhak! Need a lift?” 

A rusty, patchwork of an airship is hovering above you. A rope ladder drops down nearly on your pan. 

Peixes and Ampora. 

For once in your life, you don’t even think twice about boarding their ship: you just grab onto the rope and start climbing. 

A loud, bell-like  _ clang _ rings through the air. Ampora has his weapon out and is shooting at the drones, because of course he is. 

You want to tell him to stop and that those are imperial property, but you also want to live, so you say nothing (something you’ve been doing a lot, as of late), focusing all your attention on clinging to the ladder as the ship rises away from the dock. The drones shift their attention to the (highly illegal) ship. 

All six of them rocket into the air using their steam propellent. Two of the six fly off, back over towards the city. Four of them remain behind, and these have switched from nets to harpoons. 

The rope ladder sways sickeningly over the water, but you manage to climb aboard the seadwellers’ ship anyway, taking a moment to lie on the ship’s deck, panting as you try to calm your galloping bloodpusher. 

Peixes is at the helm, shouting encouragements at Ampora as he reloads his gun. He gets another shot off, and this time, the resulting clang sounds deeper. 

“Got ‘em,” he says. “Fef! Take her up! Now!” 

Peixes pulls the rope connected to the boiler of the ship and the steam billows up, making the world lurch around you as the ship shoots higher into the air. 

There’s a metallic screeching followed by a large, bone-shattering noise from somewhere down below. From your vantage point, though, all you can see is a cloud of steam. 

“Well, Zahhak, I guess it pays to be early!” 

This is from Peixes, who is standing over you, wearing a shark’s grin. You blink stupidly up at her and promptly proceed to pass out. 

 


	2. To Lead a Double Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art in this chapter is by aetherGeologist!
> 
> betaed by thescyfychannel <3 and muchlessvermillion <3

 

**Days in the past (but not many):**

The haunting call of a lonely seabird echoes across the cove, heralding the approach of dawn. You can see the red-violet of the sky starting to brighten to a lighter pink, and two of the three moons have already set, but tiny green Aventurine is still hanging near the horizon. 

You glance over to Fef, as she gazes at the sky. Aventurine is her favorite moon. 

Sometimes her eyes go unfocused and glaze over, and you know she’s Elsewhere, listening to the sounds of ancient things that someone like you can’t hear. This time, though, she’s staying present, if a bit wistful. 

You watch her a little longer, your feelings shifting from red-black to something a bit more pale. 

Eventually, you clear your throat. A reminder of the real world, of the fact that the two of you need to get your nightly haul of fish into the harbor before daybreak. 

Then it’s back to your shared hive for a quick nap in the sopor before starting your  _ other _ job. Your daylight job. 

That is, the job that actually makes you money, but is definitely on the wrong side of legal. 

“Fef,” you say. 

Instantly, she snaps out of her reverie, her hand straying unconsciously to her belt where you know she keeps her knife, alert and aware.

Lowbloods like you aren’t allowed weapons, but even lowbloods like you need them sometimes, and with some smooth words and even smoother credits, the blueblood harbor master is known to look the other way. 

You gesture to the ropes attached to the net. Fef nods, picking up on your meaning without words. Together, you haul in the net and its contents. 

There isn’t much. You reflect, ruefully, that it’s a good thing your daylight job brings in the credits, because there sure as fuck ain’t enough fish in this harbor to make a living. Generations of fisher trolls have already swept this area clean. 

Going further out to sea is sure death. Those that have are lost—either they never return, or come back irrevocably changed and gibbering-mad. Kinder to cull them than try to let them reintegrate into society. 

You catch Fef gazing into the distance again. Staring out over the ruddy sea. As a fuschia, she feels the call of the ocean more keenly than you do, what with your violet sensibilities. 

The seabird calls its mournful song once more, and you and Fef maneuver the net to dump the few fish you caught into the hold. It’s a depressingly empty-looking sight. 

Once you’re back at the dock, the harbor master checks in your inventory, with a suspicious sneer on her face, as if you’d somehow be smuggling more fish than you said you caught. She’s awfully low on the hemospectrum to be as uppity as she is, you think. 

You paste on a polite smile in spite of that, and nod all deferential as you and Fef disembark, though it boils the violet in your veins to do it. This boat is only yours on loan, after all. 

Your actual boat would get the both of you culled instantly for treason. 

Feferi smiles vapidly at the harbor master, who, in turn, favors her with a leer.

That’s not a look you like seeing on anyone’s face. Especially when that look is directed at your diamond...heart...spade...whatever. 

You don’t really feel like having the drones come down on you for lashing out at a higher caste, so you increase your pace and pull Fef away. 

Once out of sight of the cerulean, Fef drops her brainless waif act. 

“Ohhh that one shoal gives me the creeps!” If you could pull it off without putting her in worse straits, you’d punch anyone daring to put that grimace on her face. 

“I’m not too fond a her myself,” you say. 

The streets are still lit with a multitude of solar crystals, though their glow has dimmed considerably this close to dawn. 

You and Fef duck into the back alleys, avoiding the main thoroughfares and hiding in shadows, as the sun spreads its first rays across the land. The light catches on the tall, crystalline structures of the palace, dazzling your eyes and leaving you blinking blobs of color. 

The thought that rises, unbidden, like so much flotsam from the sea, is ‘ivory towers.’ 

It’s definitely dayfall now as the two of you make your way back to your hive—or at least, back to the place that’s officially listed on the books as your hive, just like Fef is officially listed as your moirail. The real truth of the former is that it’s a front, while the real truth of the latter is that it’s complicated. 

The rickety stairs that hug the outside of the hivestem where your apartment is creak and groan under your weight as you ascend. Other seadwellers live here, too; mostly violets and fuchsias, with the occasional purple.  _ Can’t help but give themselves away _ , you think, as you pass by a greasepaint-smeared door that some brainless plumblood’s decorated with bones.

Some deep-rooted instinct keeps seadwellers near the sea, despite the inhospitibleness of this planet’s ocean. Violets can live either on land or in the water, but fuchsias  _ must  _ have saltwater to survive, which is why your small dwelling comes with a saltwater bath. It’s also why fuchsias, despite having the same potential lifespan as other trolls, tend to die earlier due to health reasons. 

That’s not a fate Fef will ever have to deal with, you think, absolutely resolved. You’ll make it your mission in life to see that she outlives everyone. 

You reach your door, at the very top of the hivestem. It’s decorated in typical seadweller fashion: navel-themed, with shiny shells and broken bits of rope surrounding the centerpiece, a barnacle-encrusted anchor. 

As soon as the door closes behind you both, Fef strips out of her “poor seadweller” clothing, and sheds her “poor seadweller” persona, as well. 

The first thing she does is run the tap to fill her bath. She adds the salt (and she insists on shelling out for the fancy kind, it’s lucky that saltwater baths are a trendy thing among the high- and mid-bloods right now, so the fancy kind can be found everywhere) and slips in with a relieved sigh. 

As it is, the sea is far too polluted to be habitable, so fuchsias like Fef have had to improvise. 

“You want in?” she asks. “There’s room for one more.” 

She wiggles her eyebrows as she says it and grins sharkishly. There really isn’t room for one more. You know, you’ve tried it. Against your better judgement, you’ve tried it many times. 

Most of those times, you ended up stuck. Being lodged in a too-small bath like so much canned tuna is definitely a bad thing when your quadrants flip pitch, too. 

“I’m just going to clean up,” you say, ignoring temptation in pink fins and fancy salt water. 

Fef doesn’t argue, only shrugs. She wriggles down into her bath to submerge completely, leaving a trail of bubbles in her wake. 

You strip out of your own, rather fishy-smelling clothing and carefully hang them up. They were just washed two days ago, and they aren’t too bad, and really, they’re just going to get all fishified again tomorrow. 

Next is your daily ritual of scrubbing yourself clean in the small tin hip bath. The water is weakly tepid, which means that the boiler probably went out again. You make a mental note to bring it up to your landlord. 

The solar crystal on the nightstand glows a dim cobalt blue, and you move it to the window sill where it can absorb the sunlight, which is now creeping over the rest of the city, making it shine like a diamond. 

Dressed at last in sopor-stained linen trousers and shirt, you check the temperature of your shared recuperacoon. Fef likes it a bit cooler than you do, but you figure you can have a few minutes of warmth before she gets in. 

The sopor is getting thin, and you make another mental note to buy more. You always end up cutting it with water to make it last a little longer. It’s not something a purely landdwelling troll can do safely, but seadwellers learned that trick quick. 

Sopor is costly in terms of credits, and that’s only because it’s still a necessary investment. Trolls that don’t sleep in sopor go mad at full tilt, and end up getting an early culling.  _ Of course they keep it so fuckin expensive _ , you think, sour even in your own head.

There’s still a few good hours before you can even think of leaving for your more clandestine job. 

You settle in and get comfortable, and you’re nearly asleep when you feel Fef slip in beside you. She’s not wearing anything, as usual, you can feel it for yourself when she wraps her arms around you, and the world clicks into place.

 

***********

 

_ The Rust Bucket _ may be a battered, steam-powered airship, but it’s _ your _ battered, steam-powered airship. You came up with the name in a fit of inspiration and it stuck because it was funny and a little bit naughty, the way most of the best sea songs go. 

Eridan, ever the dour sourpuss, doesn’t approve, but you think your blueblood mechanic’s horrified and embarrassed reaction to the name more than makes up for it. 

He’s equally horrified and embarrassed by you and Eridan, though you’ve long suspected an element of jealousy and longing there. 

You sit back under the awning with a fresh canteen of cold, slightly-alcoholic grubjuice in your hand, and watch the mechanic work. Zahhak, his surname is. You’re not sure about his hatchname. Nevertheless, he cuts a fine figure with his shirt off. The reddish sunlight glints off the beading sweat on his impressive back muscles. He’s tall, too. You’ve always liked the tall ones. 

He’s also fun to flirt with. It riles him up until he’s blue with embarrassment and sweating even more profusely. 

Sometimes, when you and Eridan are bored between jobs, and you’ve contacted him to service your ship, you tag team flirt with him just to see him blush. 

He’s Eridan’s type too. Well, most trolls are Eridan’s type, if you’re being honest with yourself. 

There’s a  _ fwooosh _ of steam, and Zahhak shuts the valve with a ripple of fine muscle. 

You hop down from your perch and smooth out your clothes. And then, with a sway to your hips, you saunter over to him and offer him a cool drink and a towel. His flushed embarrassment is very satisfying. 

Eridan comes up from belowdecks, similarly forgoing a shirt in this heat, wearing only his usual striped trousers. The sun of this planet may not be dangerous, but it still is far warmer during the day than is comfortable. 

Zahhak notices Eridan’s lack of shirt as well, and he flushes even bluer as Eridan swaggers over in a way that has you fighting back the urge to roll your eyes. At least  _ your _ flirting isn’t so blatant.

 

“It is done,” Zahhak says, nervously, as you both converge on him. 

“You’re a damn fine mechanic, Zahhak,” Eridan says, with an appraising up and down and all the subtlety of a punch to the face. “Y’know. We could find a more permanent place for you aboard the ship. It’d be handy to have someone like you around.” 

This time, you actually do roll your eyes. 

“No, no, that’s quite alright,” Zahhak says. His voice has gone all high and strangled, as he backs away until he’s up against a pipe.

You smirk at the discomfited look on his face. He’s almost glowing blue, like your favorite solar crystal. 

“Well then, Zahhak, we’ll thank you for your time and send you on your way. Ex-shell-ent work, as always!” You toss a bag of credits at him with a roguish—and  _ subtle _ —wink. 

“Y-yes. It is no problem at all, Miss Peixes.” He fumbles for the bag and tucks it into his apron pocket. You’ll have mercy and put the fumbling down to his fluster,  _ and _ resist the urge to comment as he pulls his cracked, dark lense goggles down around his neck, grabs his discarded shirt, and makes a hasty getaway down the rope ladder anchoring the  _ Bucket _ to your makeshift air dock. 

“Same time next week?” you call down over the railing. 

“Y-yes, Miss Peixes. I will see you then. Thank you,” Zahhak says from the ground, voice raised over the rumble and clank of the  _ Bucket _ starting up. 

_ This one’s so polite, _ you think. It’s a very welcome change from the usual thuggishness associated with most cobalts and ceruleans. You watch him retreat with equal parts admiration and regret. 

“Well, we’ve got a job to do,” Eridan says, coming up behind you. 

You throw him a grin. Time to break some laws.  

 

*******

 

This job is relatively easy, at least. A simple pick-up-and-drop run. 

The  _ Rust Bucket _ might not look like much, but it’s more your home than any respiteblock in your hivestem could ever be, even if that’s only because it’s  _ yours _ , without any qualifiers. You and Fef salvaged it from the junk heap. You and Fef fixed it up until it could run again. You and Fef poured your blood, sweat, and tears into this clanking monstrosity, and it’s now a part of you. 

You fought Fef on the name, because honestly, the _ Rust Bucket? _ It sounded so…juvenile when she suggested it. And whenever Fef snickers over the name you know that was intentional. 

But then again, it  _ is _ a bit rusty… well, no matter. 

You steer it out under the bright red sun, using the thermals rising off the sea to give you a boost into the air. There’s a layer between the highest strata of clouds and the lowest that has an excellent easterly wind current, which, when caught with side-sails, carries the ship along while using the least amount of fuel. 

The familiar, dueling sensations of tension and excitement snake through your core, and you find yourself holding your breath until you’re above the first layer of clouds. 

Most trolls are sleeping, as your species is, it turns out,  _ naturally _ nocturnal. That works in your favor, because it means there won’t be many awake to witness an illegal airship coming and going. 

Usually. 

Fortunately, while the sun of this planet is not deadly, staying out after sunrise is still considered bad luck. Simple survival tactics on Alternia mutate into full-blown superstitions on far-flung colonies. 

The clouds above you clear, and the red light of midday shines uninhibited, painting the clouds around and below in gold and crimson. 

You adjust your coat, making sure that no part of your skin is in the direct light.

While you may not be particularly superstitious, yourself, a little caution never went amiss.    
  


Your meeting point is just over the far hills, in one of the stone circles that dot the land. 

The previous inhabitants of this planet had built them…though what happened to  _ them _ is anyone’s guess. They had left bits and pieces of themselves behind, but no clues as to what happened. 

Once you’ve gone beyond the sight of the capital, you steer the ship lower. The stone circle swims into view beyond a line of trees.

Your contact is a purple who’s taller even than Zahhak, though nowhere near as well-built. He’s lounging on a fallen stone plinth, gazing at the sky. He’s a clown cultist, as most purples tend to be, judging by the liberal greasepaint on his face.  

You bring the Bucket in for landing as smooth as silk, alighting on the golden brown grass that grows around the stone circles. 

Fef hops down before you even anchor it. One of these days she’s going to sprain something doing that. But all your warnings fall on deaf earfins. 

You watch with equal parts amusement and disgust as she climbs up onto the stone plinth and gives your contact a loud, wet kiss. 

There’s no reason to be jealous, you tell yourself. You’ve both known Makara for ages. You also both know that he isn’t interested in any sort of involvement beyond being a contact. 

Sometimes you wonder how someone so...absent-minded wound up in this line of work. Or at least, he gives off the impression of being absent-minded. You’ve never been able to work out how much of that is an act, and how much is genuine. 

There’s no time for navel gazing now. You anchor the ship and disembark, sauntering over to Makara and Fef. 

There’s a large crate just behind the stone plinth. How Makara got it here on his own is a mystery that you’d rather not find the answer to. Some things are best left alone. You do know that he’s freakishly strong, which is helpful when you load the cargo. Lowbloods tend to be strong, but purples somehow outstrip even seadwellers in that regard. 

Once the cargo is loaded—and it takes the combined muscle of the three of you—you wave farewell to Makara, who grins dreamily and then ambles off to wherever it is he goes when he’s not engaging in illegal activities. You don’t know, and you probably don’t  _ want  _ to know. 

A strong wind is picking up from the east, which will make the return trip difficult. 

Fef is facing towards the sea, lost in listening. She snaps out of it before you can say anything. 

“We’ll need to wait for at least an hour,” she says. 

“Did  _ They _ tell you that?” 

She only smiles. “Maybe.” 

The breeze catches her hair and sends tendrils of it wild all around her head, making her look, for a moment, like a divine being. 

“Or maybe it’s just that I can see a break in the clouds ahead,” she continues.  

 

*******

 

The boiler for heating the air in the ship is acting up again. This is not a good time for it to be doing that. You clank a wrench against one of the pipes, despite knowing that won’t do anything. You’re too far from your drop point to make it, and too far from home to make it back. 

Today is not going well. 

“We have to take it down or it’s going to take  _us_ down,” you shout. The wind whips your words away, but Fef gets the gist anyhow. 

She nods, and ties her hair up in a cloth, then hikes her skirt up around her waist and tucks it into her belt. She then does a bit of aerial acrobatics that has your bloodpusher racing for a couple of different reasons, as she leaps from the railing of the Bucket and grabs onto one of the many ropes hanging from the balloon to shimmy up to the top. 

She’s so much better at that than you are, and you’re equal parts jealous and awed. 

You man the rudder, and steer the Bucket at an angle to the wind.

Navigating the dangerous air currents is  _ your _ strong suit. Together, you and Fef are a well-oiled machine. A force to be reckoned with. A…pair of dumb seadwellers trying to make a living in the sky, honestly,  _ what were you thinking _ ? 

The Bucket gives a mighty jolt and you have to do some fancy steering to straighten out. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see that Fef has released the wings. The canvas flaps and snaps taut, catching a thermal off the coast. You use that to keep the Bucket above the treetops. 

Barely. 

Those treetops are worryingly close, all of a sudden. 

You land the Bucket in a wide plain, empty of everything except a few fleetbeasts and an assortment of tall grasses. Some of which might be of the carnivorous variety, you’re not sure. There is a line of trees marching along a river that runs down out of the hills. 

The presence of the river means you’ll be able to replenish the cisterns with fresh water instead of salt. Zahhak has mentioned on several occasions that salt water corrodes the pipes quicker. 

The Bucket lands hard, and you have the sneaking suspicion something important was knocked loose. 

Feferi swings down from the top, just as the air sac begins to deflate in the absence of hot air. The rigid framework is the only thing that keeps it from collapsing on the both of you. 

“What’s the damage?” you ask. 

“There’s a tear in the port side anterior quadrant of the air sac, and I’m pretty sure the boiler needs replacing,” she tells you. 

You sigh. You’d just patched the thing up on the starboard side anterior. Luckily, you have more sealant belowdecks, and you’re fairly certain you have some extra arachnoid-silk cloth stashed around somewhere to use as a patch. 

The whole balloon is nothing but patches, at this point. The boiler will be fine after some tightened bolts and a cooldown period. Or fine enough that it’ll get you to your drop point. The cargo is safe in the hold, for now. 

You look up at the sky, squinting against the light. There’s still time to make the drop point and get back before dusk, but only just. The cove where you’re to make your drop isn’t all that far from here, you reckon. Just over that line of hills to the north. 

Feferi has disappeared belowdecks. Probably after the silk and sealant. 

You turn back to the problematic boiler, and pull out a box of crude tools from the compartment beneath it. 

Not for the first time, you’ve considered taking Fef’s joking advice seriously and kidnapping that blueblood mechanic. He’s got a knack for these things that you tragically lack. A few tightened bolts later, and you pronounce the boiler “good enough.” 

Feferi emerges from below, with a patch and the sealant, and swarms back up the rope, balancing on the framework like a purrbeast, to get to the tear. 

The balloon hasn’t completely deflated yet, so Fef still has a chance to fix the tear before it does. Otherwise you’d have to wait until the boiler could run again. 

When she shimmies down the rope once more, you turn the various knobs and dials on the boiler and give it a solid whack with a wrench for good measure. It starts with a reluctant sputter. But at least it starts. That’s something. You’ll have to talk to Zahhak and see if he has any connections that could get you a new one. 

 

*******

 

Eridan is so cute when he’s sulking, you think. And he’s always sulking. He’s fixed up the boiler again, and now you’re just waiting for the steam to heat up so you can be on your way. 

Being out in the open like this makes you nervous. Being surrounded by so much land makes you nervous, honestly. You’re tied to the sea in a way even violetbloods aren’t. 

But even without that, the tall grass can hide dangerous things. Wild beasts, feral trolls. Shell, even the grass itself is one of the flesh-eating varieties. 

You swipe your knife at a creeping tendril that’s slowly trying to wind around your ankle. It retreats at the touch of salt-tempered steel, and you turn back to your inspection of the hull. 

That landing wasn’t the gentlest one Eridan’s ever pulled off, but it could’ve been worse. The Bucket might not look like much but she’s strong where it counts. Even a crash landing doesn’t phase her, you think, swelling a bit with pride. 

You climb back onto the ship, well out of reach of any carnivorous plants, and settle yourself above the prow. 

The wind shifts, and the familiar scent of the deep sea is back. It floods your senses and curls along your spine. It smells of danger and dark things. 

It smells of home. 

With it, the Whispering returns. You’ve been hearing it on and off your entire life, but lately it’s been happening more often. 

Sometimes, you zone out so hard you have no memory of what had just happened. Those times, you come to with Eridan hovering over you like a worried lusus, saying you were “gone.” 

The Whispering. It sounds so stupid, but you don’t have a better name for it. It’s like a million voices all layered on top of each other, speaking a language you don’t understand. 

You don’t hear it with your aural canals, either. It plays in your head like a song stuck on a loop. It always worries Eridan when you tell him about it, so you’ve stopped saying anything. 

“Fef?” Eridan says it with the air of someone who’s had to repeat himself a few times. 

“I’m here,” you say. 

 


	3. Redder than Pale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art in the beginning of this chapter is by aetherGeologist!
> 
> Betaed by muchlessvermillion <3

 

Another evening, another boring highblood function. You shuffle your way into your rooms in the pinkish light of dawn, the rustle of miles of red taffeta following your every movement. You seriously question your caste-sister’s choice in clothing designers. 

Damara Megido may be the queen, but her taste runs towards the tacky. You just wish that whatever the queen wore wouldn’t be considered high fashion. You’ve long suspected she intentionally wore the most ridiculous getups just to see how long it would take before the rest of the court broke. 

Finally, you reach your respiteblock, where Sollux is already waiting for you. He’s shucked off all his horrid finery, and is wearing his usual uniform of a worn-out t-shirt and equally worn-out jeans. 

There’s a pile of books and old game consoles and other assorted junk, liberally sprinkled with cushions and covered haphazardly with a blanket. He’s sprawled in the center, poking at a beaten-up grubcube that’s probably older than both of you combined. 

It doesn’t work anymore, but that hasn’t stopped Sollux from trying to repair it. 

You’re so glad to see him your bloodpusher speeds up a couple notches. 

“Finally escaped, AA?” he says, his oversize fangs causing a charming lisp on the sibilants. You can’t help but smile. 

“Yes, though getting away from golds and bronzes is easy compared to getting out of this contraption,” at ‘contraption’ you gesture towards the acres of gauzy red material masquerading as a dress. 

Sollux snorts. “I’m glad I don’t have to wear that shit,” he says. And then “Aauggh!” when you lob your small couture handbag at his head. 

You remove the pin to take the jewel-encrusted, supposedly high-fashion tiny hat off, and your hair tumbles free. Well, it mostly just allows gravity to affect it somewhat as it’s still held more or less in shape by the gallon of hairspray holding it together. You run your fingers through your unruly mane, and sigh when your claws catch on tangles. You are going to shave your entire head, one of these days. You threaten to do it at least once a sweep, despite knowing Damara might just actually have you culled. 

Once the many layers of dress are shed and left to puddle on the floor (more like stand in stiff peaks like so many fabric mountains) you step free, wearing only bloomers and a structured camisole, and flop down onto the pile next to Sollux with a sigh of relief. 

There’s a silence, but it’s a comfortable one. A silence that only two trolls who have known each other since practically the day they hatched can have. 

“That bad, eh?” he says, quietly. 

“Is this really going to be what the rest of my life is?” you say. 

That’s not what you meant to say, but now that it’s out there, the truth of it shakes you to your core. You don’t want this. You don’t want any of this. You’re a princess held captive by her own caste. You’re trapped. 

Sollux says nothing, because there is nothing to say to that. You both know the truth. Instead of false reassurances, he simply sets his game down and wraps you in his wiry arms. You burrow your face into his neck like a grub snuggling a lusus. 

You feel like crying for a couple of different reasons, but you don’t because it won’t change anything. 

 

*******

 

Aradia dozes fitfully in her overly-large recuperacoon. You gaze down at her with a redder pity than is appropriate for a moirail, and reach out to smooth the hair from her face. She calms at your touch, wriggling closer. 

The sun is setting, and a beam of reddish light pools across the floor. Aradia’s recuperacoon is thankfully out of the line of light. 

Tomorrow night is the highblood grand ball. 

Tomorrow night you will be put to the test. The current Spymaster, and also your mentor, Meliza Cathrk, received a summons from the Grand High Empress Herself. She’ll be leaving Carnelian and joining the High Empress’ personal retinue in less than a sweep. 

Which means you’ll be taking her place as Spymaster. 

You’re looking forward to it the way one might look forward to going to the gallows. 

The sopor is warm and pleasant as you slip further down in it, luxuriating in this quiet moment before you have to be up for the night. 

An evening lie-in was not to be, however, when you hear the grinding slide of the stone panel which hides one of the many secret passageways riddling the palace. 

Your eyes snap open immediately, and your body tenses. Whip-quick you lash out with your psionics, wrapping them around and levitating the intruder. Then, without even emerging from the sopor, you bend your psionics into a cage, and squeeze. 

The ripple of answering power from their aura is familiar. You give one final squeeze, out of spite, before dropping your mentor to the floor. 

You lever yourself out of the sopor, uncaring of the way it clings in globs to your day clothes. 

“Not bad, sparky. A little crude, but not bad,” Meliza Cathrk stands in the center of the room, not even a hair out of place. She’s wearing a complicated getup that involves a corset on the outside of her dress for some reason, and a tiny hat decorated with a large feather. 

It doesn’t seem to matter what she wears, because she manages to make even the most ridiculous court fashion work for her, somehow. 

She’s very traditionally pretty, with large golden eyes, a sweetly pointed face, and long hair elaborately styled around symmetrical, two-pronged horns. 

Her looks are yet another weapon in her vast arsenal. People look at her and see a vapid, spoiled highblood. They always miss the cunning in her eyes; the way she sees everything and lets nothing escape. 

You wish you were that good. 

She certainly doesn’t need a bigger ego than she already has, so you keep your admiration to yourself. 

“What do you want,” you say, idly scraping the sopor off your day shirt. 

“Tomorrow night’s the big night. You think you can handle it?” 

“I can handle anything.” 

You say it easily, like you know you should. Meliza doesn’t buy it, of course. 

“Sure you can, sparky,” she says, with a crooked flash of fang. 

“You’ll be there, too,” you remind her. 

“Yeah, but only in an advisory capacity,” she says. She’s already sizing up the room in that calculating way of hers. Taking in the environment. 

You shift a bit, uncomfortably aware of how safe you feel, here in Aradia’s respiteblock. There’s no such thing as a truly safe space when you’re royalty. Or when you’re quadranted to royalty. You can’t afford to let your guard down, even for one moment. Aradia can’t afford it. 

“This balcony is a weak point. Why the fuck did your princess pick a respiteblock with a balcony?” 

At that, you feel Aradia stirring in the sopor beside your leg. 

“Because I can fly,” Aradia mutters sleepily. 

“Yeah, and assassins can climb. They have airships. Psychic abilities crop up in lowbloods from time to time, even. Why risk having a gaping hole in your security when there’s a very real chance of a disgruntled purpleblood psionic levitating up through your window and braining you with a club?” 

It’s an argument you’d had with Aradia before, but she’s always managed to convince you to stay in the room. You suspect she rather likes the prospect of living dangerously, but you also know better than to say it to her face. 

Meliza, however, isn’t afraid to speak her mind, even to a rubyblood. You’ve heard her mouth off to the queen herself, before. 

Luckily, Damara has a sense of humor, and an appreciation for pretty faces, so Meliza could probably get away with literal murder. 

Aradia levers herself out of the sopor. The expensive blue sopor clings to her day clothes, too. 

You’re both standing there covered in blue goop like a pair of idiots while Meliza stalks around the room, occasionally poking at this or that, and sometimes letting out a jolt of green psionics. 

“What are you doing, anyway?” Aradia asks. You’re grateful, because it saves you the trouble of asking yourself and earning a Look from Meliza. 

Instead, your mentor levels The Look at Aradia, who meets it with A Look of her own. 

“I’m securing the perimeter, looking for weak points in the shielding and—” at that, a very loud BZZZT of green psionics lance into a loose tile between two large, marble pillars, “—scanning for bugs,” she finishes, pulling her psionics back with a crackle and tossing a fried scryingbeetle on the floor not even a meter away. 

She looks at you both with a delicate eyebrow raised. “I do hope you haven’t been talking state secrets lately.” 

You swallow, hard, around the guilt in your throat. You really should’ve noticed that. 

Aradia squints at the fried beetle, and gingerly lifts it with her telekinetics, bringing it close to her face to examine. Its wings have been clipped, and its legs are missing. Standard practice when using them for spying. 

“Will it still work?” she asks. 

You look to Meliza, who shrugs. “You could try it. See if it caught anything? We found it before it could be collected, which is the important thing.” 

Aradia steps out of the recuperacoon and makes her way over to the small side table. The scryingbeetle bobs along obediently behind her, held aloft by her powers. 

On the table is a vase full of night-blooming jasmine, and a small dish that holds an assortment of jelly worms. She tips the worms out onto the table and carefully pours some water from the vase into the dish. Gingerly, she sets the beetle down in the water. 

Somehow, it doesn’t surprise you that Aradia knows how a scryingbeetle works. 

You and Meliza, by unspoken agreement, gather close to the table to watch. 

The dead beetle spins slowly in the water. The ripples reach the edge of the dish and when they rebound, an image begins to form. It’s broken, and the sound is full of crackling. 

The image shows you and Aradia, talking in low voices. Pale pillow talk. Nothing incriminating, thank fuck. 

It couldn’t have been there long, because it reaches the end of the cycle and then plays back. 

You glance up and Meliza is watching you with that shrewd, too-knowing expression. She never misses anything. Sometimes she even knows things about you before you figure it out yourself. 

“This was our conversation yesterday morning,” Aradia says. 

“Well it’s a good thing I found this when I did. But more importantly, how many had been in here before I looked?” Meliza says. 

That thought makes a chill run down your spinal column. You wrack your thinkpan. What sorts of things do you and Aradia talk about? Mostly it’s boring, idle chatter, or deep feelings jams. You don’t really talk about politically important things. 

Aradia tucks a lock of hair behind one of her horns and prods at the scryingbeetle again. 

Meliza watches you watch her with a knowing look. 

Meliza Cathrk doesn’t miss anything, but in this moment, you kind of wish she did. 

 


	4. Keeping Mostly Daylight Hours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter betaed by muchlessvermillion <3

 

The cove where your drop-off point is lies just ahead. Miraculously, the  _ Bucket _ is holding up today. Eridan stands at the helm. The red mid-afternoon sunlight slants in under the balloon and paints the side of his face in ruddy light. 

This is your third job of the week, but it’s by far the most time-consuming. Once you’ve dropped this cargo off at the cove, you’ll take on another before you return to the city.  

At this rate, it’ll be another night of sleep-deprived fishing. It’s a good thing you dozed a bit before you left, because there won’t be any time at all for another nap when you get back. 

Shell, you might even be late, and the cerulean harbormaster will take it out of your paycheck, if she doesn’t take it out of your hide. 

You shudder at the thought, and turn your face to the wind to clear your mind. 

The Whispering has been gaining in intensity over the past week. It’s taken on an edge of anticipation, like something  _ big _ is going to happen. That anticipation is infectious, and you find yourself excited and nervous for reasons you can’t put into words. 

Eridan takes The Bucket around a last outcropping of cliffside, and there, in a sheltered lagoon, is the drop point. 

The Bucket descends and you drop the anchor over the side. It lands with a splash in the shallow red-purple pool. 

Eridan keeps The Bucket hovering only a few feet off the orange sand. It’s much easier to get it in the air again if it’s not completely beached. 

The splash summons your contact; a tall, cloaked figure with gracefully curved horns and meticulously-applied greasepaint in the design of a skull on his face. 

He says nothing, but then again, you don’t expect him to. His mouth is stitched shut. You think it’s some kind of religious clown thing, but you’re not sure. It’s not any of your business, anyway. 

The shape of his horns make you think he’s related to Makara, though you’ve never seen his sign. But you’re not being paid to ask questions, so you don’t. 

He nods at you as you swing down to open the cargo doors on the side of your ship (another advantage of an airship: you can have doors in the side). 

The cargo is far too heavy for you to lift alone, so while you can give it a good shove to the edge of the hold, getting it down will require more trollpower than just yourself. 

But Quiet Makara’s got that covered, too. He’s a psionic...or something like it. His eyes glow violet and he gestures to the crate. Something, almost like a shadow, envelopes the crate and lifts it. 

His psionic powers smell of decaying seaweed and old salt and that whiff you get sends the Whispers crescendoing in your head for a dizzying moment. 

You blink, and the moment’s gone. 

Another crate, this one much lighter, levitates towards you and sets itself down in the hold. You secure it in place with a system of ropes. 

Quiet Makara smiles politely and tosses a bag of credits at you. You catch it and weigh it in your palm. Hefty. You open the bag and take one out and bite it. The metallic ting of gold against your fangs is a welcome sensation. 

You shoot him a grin and a wave and climb out to pull the cargo doors shut. Eridan is taking The Bucket up before you even shimmy up the rope back to the deck. 

 

*******

It’s nearly sundown by the time you’ve finished with your final drop off. At least this one was just on the outskirts of the city, where you could keep low behind the treeline. Out of sight. Most trolls don’t emerge until full dark, but you don’t want to take any chances. And this way, you can use the trees as cover almost the entire way back to the rocky stretch of beach where you keep The Bucket docked. 

You glance at Fef. She’s sitting on the deck next to you, counting out the credits. Though it looks less like counting and more like she’s setting them out in swirling designs that twist about and make your pan hurt to look at. You think she just enjoys playing with money. 

There’s enough credits to buy a new boiler for The Bucket, as well as more sopor and food. And, of course, rent. 

Rent for a place that’s not really home, anyway. 

The trees give way to the jagged cliffside. One more curve and you’re home free. 

Except when you come around the curve, you know something is wrong immediately. 

The thin strip of lonely, rocky beach is walled in on three sides by sheer cliff face, completely isolated from everything. It’s only accessible from the churning, treacherous waters of the sea,  a path too narrow for two adult trolls to walk side-by-side, or the unpredictable, eddying currents of the air, and as such is usually completely devoid of anything other than driftwood, dead kelp, and at night, your highly illegal airship. 

Except for right now, because it seems to be hosting some kind of clown cult jamboree. 

What the fuck.

“What the fuck?” You startle when Feferi echoes your thoughts perfectly. 

Several dozen cloaked figures stand on the strip of beach that is normally the dock for The Rust Bucket, which is strange enough. But they’re holding hands and chanting. A layered, complex melody that sends ice through your veins and makes your hair stand on end. 

Their faces are all done up in the usual greasepaint and you can’t tell what castes any of them are. 

Something else is happening down there, too. A pair of cloaked trolls are pulling along a third as they they travel the very narrow ledge that serves as a path to get from the city to the beach. The third one is fighting weakly, as if they’ve been drugged, and their head is covered by a sack. 

You watch in fascinated horror as they’re dragged in front of the troll standing in the center of the chanting line. You don’t recognize the horns on any of the cloaked ones but, when the hood is removed from the prisoner, the familiar, identically-barbed tines of the cerulean harbormaster gleam dully in the late afternoon light.  

You have a sinking feeling you know what’s going to happen next, and there isn’t any reason to stay. Staging a daring rescue would just get you killed, and you have to look out for yourselves first. 

“We’re leavin’,” you say, glancing over to Fef. 

She’s watching the...ritual, or whatever it is, but her eyes have gone all distant. Like when she’s listening to  _ Them. _ You know right then and there that you have to get out, now. 

You steer the  _ Bucket _ away and head out over the open sea.

 

*******

This isn’t the first time you’ve had to spend the night over the sea. Eridan usually tries to avoid it, because he says it makes you “go awway, mentally.” Well, maybe you  _ do _ zone out a bit! But it’s not like there’s anyfin  _ else _ to do right now. 

At least dawn is coming, and you can go back to the city. The Bucket has a hot date with Zahhak at late-afternoon. Maybe this time you’ll convince him to stay onboard for a while. 

And then, you’ll have to figure out a new place to moor The Rust Bucket, since your secret cove isn’t exactly a secret anymore. 

You don’t...remember much. There was a gathering of some cloaked weirdos on the beach, and the next thing you knew, Eridan had taken The Bucket out to sea. He told you that they were chanting in some strange language and you’d “gone awway” again. 

The first light of the sun turns the sky shades of magenta and red, and Eridan steers you back towards land. 

The sun is fully up by the time you reach shore. Eridan hadn’t dared to go back to the usual docking place, so he brings The Bucket down on the other side of the line of trees that screen the city from sight. This was the old hiding place, before you’d found the secret beach.  

You’re not looking forward to that long walk from this spot, and you’re looking forward to Eridan’s non-stop complaining even less. 

When you mention that the harbormaster will be furious that you’d both missed a night of work, he just looks at you like he’s seen a ghost. 

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem, Fef,” he says, finally. 

The walk back to your hivestem is unusually quiet, after that. 

 

*******

 

The city is silent—oddly so. Despite being a nocturnal people, usually there are still trolls out and about in the early light of day, finishing up the night’s business. 

But the streets are completely deserted this morning. 

You and Fef skirt the green and blue districts, keeping to the side streets and alleyways, always under concealing shadow. Once you can smell the rusty-salt of the sea, you know you’re back in purple territory. 

It’s  _ strangely  _ quiet, as if some kind of spell had cast a hush over everything. By unspoken agreement, you and Fef don’t speak the entire way back to the rundown building you legally call home, for fear of drawing attention to yourselves. 

Fef stops cold, and her hand darts out to clutch at your sleeve. She must’ve felt it before you do: a distant rumble below the threshold of hearing that echoes through your bones. 

Her eyes are wide, glittering in the dim light of a nearby solar crystal. 

You quicken your pace, eventually breaking into a run the last few blocks. 

But when you round the corner, you know immediately that something is wrong. Feferi reacts quicker than you, and tugs you back behind the corner, out of sight. 

Drones patrol the area around your hivestem. 

You chance a quick look. Seven, maybe eight. 

Going back to your respiteblock is out of the question, apparently. You briefly consider holing up in one of the abandoned buildings, but discard the notion immediately. 

Fef exchanges a look with you. Then she tilts her head back toward the direction you came from. 

You nod in agreement.

The Bucket has supplies and even a recuperacoon. It’s your best bet. 

You’ve barely made that decision when an ear-splitting explosion rocks the city, knocking you both down. 

Debris rains down upon you, and you throw your overcoat over both you and Fef and shuffle as one to the boarded-up doorway of an abandoned building. 

Now, you hear screams rending the morning air, and a horrid rumbling like the whole world is collapsing. 

Something hits the ground near your feet and bounces towards you. It’s cobalt-blue, and still faintly glowing. Feferi gasps, and reaches out a trembling hand to pick it up before you can stop her. 

It’s the solar crystal from your respiteblock. 

You pull your overcoat off enough to take a look. 

Instead of the familiar ramshackle hivestem scraping the sky, there’s only a pillar of smoke. 

You look at Fef. Fef looks at you. She’s still clutching the crystal. 

A metallic rumble breaks you out of your shock. One of the drones has landed near your makeshift shelter. A cloud of steam issues from it, and it turns its head towards you. Its eyes are glowing violet. 

You do not trust the drones; they have a “cull first, ask questions never” approach, and you’ve never been one to bow to authority. 

There’s a frozen moment where you think the drone might leave you be. But then it raises its arm and sets its sights on you. 

Time to go. 

Fef flings your overcoat at the drone just as it’s about to fire; either a weapon or a capturing net, you don’t know and you don’t care. Your coat distracts it long enough for Fef to give you a shove back into the street. 

You’ll have to mourn the loss of  _ your favorite coat  _ later, when you’re no longer in immediate danger of being culled. 

Adrenaline burns the exhaustion right out of your body as you and Fef dodge drones, rubble, and panicked trolls. 

Because now, of course, the streets are full of fighting and screaming. The drones switch their attentions to easier targets.

But still you run.   


*******

 

It’s midday when you finally make it back to The Bucket. It’s been too long since you’ve last had a good day’s rest, and the ache in your bones reminds you of it. 

You’re still clutching your solar crystal to your chest. The only thing of any kind of sentimental value you had in your hive. It’s miraculously still in one piece and you take it as a sign. Serendipity. 

For once, The Bucket starts for Eridan on the first try. You wrap your crystal in a bit of cloth and stow it in a compartment just under the boiler. 

He’s mourning the loss of his favorite coat, but at that moment, it was sacrifice the coat or get culled. 

You give him a conciliatory pap on the cheek. “That coat saved our fins. It died a hero.” 

The look he shoots you is a wonderful combination of fondness and exasperation. You grin back at him with all your teeth before slipping into the ship’s cabin. When you emerge, you present him with his second favorite coat. A peace offering. 

No hive to go back to, and all that’s left of your worldly possessions are right here, on the ship. 

It’s the sort of thing that sounds romantic in a story, but the reality is quite different. For one thing, the boiler is on its last legs, and for another, you’ll need more food and supplies. 

But you decide to worry about that later. 

Right now, Eridan is chewing on his lip, like he does when he’s deep in thought. 

“We need to go south,” he says. 

You raise your eyebrows. South will take you right back over the city. 

Eridan lets out an exasperated sigh, and combs his claws through his hair, messing it up. “We’ll keep over the water, but the closest city is south a’ here. We’ll need food. Sopor. An’ probably someone who knows how to fix a coddamn boiler.” 

As he says it, the boiler makes a “ _ ffwwumph _ ” sound and The Bucket lurches for a moment. You hate that he’s right, but he is. 

You nod, and tie your hair back up in a kerchief. 

“Fef.” 

You turn around just in time to catch the weapon Eridan throws at you. 

“Just in case,” he says.

 

 

*******

 

The sun is definitely on a downward arc, now. Eridan has been keeping low and over the water, flying from one scrap of cover to another.  

But now, you’re over the harbor and all cover is gone. You’ll be sitting ducks if you’re spotted. 

You’d both decided it would be best to make a run for it across the harbor. You’re at your usual place on the prow, scanning for any trouble. (Eridan says you’re lookout because he’s manning the helm, but you both know it’s because you have the keener eyesight.) 

You’re right at the midway point over the water when you see half a dozen drones chasing after a troll on the dock.

A familiar, tall and muscular troll with a distinctive broken-off horn. 

“Eridan!” 

“What?”

“Is that Zahhak?”  

“What? Where?” 

You gesture back to the docks. Of course, Eridan isn’t looking in the right place.  

“We should get him!” The wind almost whips your words away. 

“Are you crazy, Fef? We can’t stop now!” 

“We need a mechanic! You said so yourself!” 

There’s a moment where neither of you say anything. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Zahhak throw a barrel at one of the drones. 

And then:

“Fine.” 

Eridan turns the ship toward the dock and angles it downward. 

You run to the side and heave the rope ladder over the edge. 

Unlike Eridan, you absolutely believe in Serendipity.

 

 

*******

 

Your name is Equius Zahhak, and you have definitely had better nights. Finding a dead body was bad enough, but being chased through the city and almost getting culled (or captured) by the drones for reasons unknown, when you haven’t had any rest, and with nothing in your digestion sac but tea and honey cakes, was, as Vriska would say, “the piss icing on the shit cake.” 

And then, adding insult to injury, having to be saved by those two reprobate seadwellers. Those two  _ uncomfortably attractive  _ reprobate seadwellers.

Ampora, the violet, is always making passes at you. You’re half-afraid you’ll take him up on it one of these nights. 

Peixes, the fuschia, is even bolder, especially considering her caste! It’s unseemly. It makes you...really need a towel. You’re practically glowing blue. Or you would be, if you weren’t in complete shock. Admittedly, your mind latched onto the first mundane thing it could, in the aftermath. 

The worst part is, you’re pathetically grateful they showed up when they did, or you’d have joined that cerulean corpse in the sea. 

Of course, this now means you’re a fugitive. You’ve never liked being on the other side of the law. It got under your hide like needles when you had to turn to more clandestine side jobs to make ends meet. 

You sit where you’d landed after being hauled up the rope ladder by Ampora and Peixes. That reminds you that you really should learn their proper hatchnames, if you’re going to be dwelling with them for a while. 

You clutch your palmhusk like a lifeline. Once your bloodpusher stops galloping in your chest cavity like so many racing hoofbeasts, you’ll call Nepeta. Right now, you’re too shell-shocked to do anything but sit there like a great blue lump. 

Presently, you become aware of someone speaking in your general direction. 

You shake your head to clear it. Peixes is standing there, holding out her canteen of...something. Grubjuice maybe? You hope it’s grubjuice. You don’t think you could handle anything stronger, right now. 

“Thank you,” you tell her, as politely as you can manage, and take the canteen. 

It’s significantly stronger than grubjuice. 

The alcohol burns a path of fire down your throat, and expands into your gut, warming you to your very core. It tastes terrible. You make a face, and down the rest of it in one gulp. 

All of a sudden, you’re incredibly grateful for the invention of alcohol, as your mind goes fuzzy around the edges and the events of the past few hours dwindle to insignificance. 

“You might wanna ease up on that, it’s strong,” Ampora says. 

You’re not sure when he got here, but you’re glad he is. The reddish sun sets just beyond the railings and outlines both of them and they are  _ beautiful _ . The light shines through, catching on their ear fins and making them glow with their blood colors. The light catches on that violet steak in Ampora’s hair, and even that aberration is lovely.  

The everything is pink-red, a hue you’ve never properly appreciated before. How strange, you think, that pink and red should be right next to each other in the sky, and yet are so far apart in society. 

Peixes lets out a laugh like the chiming of a silver bell. You’re puzzled for a moment, until you realize you must have said that out loud. The pink-red thing. 

“Oh, he’s  _ fun _ when he’s drunk!” Peixes snickers. 

Ampora is looking at you in a calculating way. “He must not’ve had anything to eat lately, for it to affect him that fast.” 

“Or he’s just a lightweight,” Peixes replies. “Are you a lightweight, Zahhak?” 

“Equius,” you say. Well, slur, more like. It comes out “Equeeiishh.” 

Peixes lets out another peal of bell-like laughter, and even Ampora looks like he’s suppressing a smile. Ordinarily, you’d be absolutely mortified. But right now, nothing could be further from the truth. 

You laugh along with them. It feels good. You feel good, right now. 

Something lurks at the back of your mind, something very important, but you can’t seem to summon it at the moment. 

The palmhusk in your hand vibrates, suddenly. 

You stare at it for a beat, before answering. There’s only one person it could be. 

“ _ Are you alright? Equius?” _ Nepeta’s tinny voice issues from the device the second you flip it open. 

You blink, the light from the sun reflecting off the waves dances in your eyes and leaves blobs of color floating in your vision. 

“I’m fine,” you tell her. 

_ “There’s been an upkkzzzzzzzjjfkhttzzt and I’m fffakkzzzlllflfsszt but don’t worry! Vriska warned us about—sssfkkttkbbzzsstkkzz—and we’re—hzhhzhkjjfszt-ease take care of yourself!”  _

The palmhusk is growing alarmingly warm in your hand. 

You have to hold it away from your face, because the crackling and popping hurts your ears. The picture on the screen wobbles and slips, blinking out entirely and giving over to static and then snapping back. 

The cracks across the screen are multiplying even as you watch. 

“Nepeta! I couldn’t understand most of that.” You’re shouting, as if that would actually make your voice carry better over the tenuous connection. 

The device is hot to the touch, now. The ship catches a thermal that sends it out over the sea, and the moment you’re over the water, the screen cracks apart, shooting sparks of light. You, Ampora, and Peixes flinch away as your old palmhusk shatters in a puff of smoke in your hand. 

“Oh,” you say, stupidly staring at your hand where wisps of smoke still linger. 

The buzz you’d had from the seadweller’s alcohol is gone. 

“Whale, that happened,” Peixes says, breaking the awkward silence. “I’m Feferi, by the way. And this grumpygills here is Eridan!” 

She holds out her hand to you. 

You take it. It’s cooler than yours, which is to be expected, but a lot less clammy than you were anticipating. 

“Looks like we’ve got a new crew member!” Peixes—Feferi chirps. 

You swallow, weakly. You have a feeling it’s going to be a long night. 

 

*******

 

Well you got your wish. Zahhak is on board your ship, if not permanently, then at least for a good while. It’s almost enough to make you believe in Serendipity. 

You take a swig of Fef’s homebrew grubjuice. It burns a pleasing trail of fire down your throat and warms you to the core. You look over to your new crewmate. 

He’s clinging like a barnacle to the main mast of the ship. If he’s going to keep doing that, you’ll have to plate the base of it in metal, you think, noting the way the wood cracks and splinters under his arms. 

Chaos is breaking out all over the capitol. It wasn’t an isolated attack on the building you lived in, as you’d first thought. Something bigger is happening. And now the drones have gone rogue. Trolls of all castes are fighting them and each other. From your vantage point in the sky, you can see pockets of fighting in the streets. 

Another explosion rocks the city. A tall hivestem crumples, almost in slow motion, to the ground. On the north side, a mass of greasy black smoke billows into the vermillion sky. 

Imperial airships rise into the air, buoyed by the multicolored crackle of psionics. They turn as one, and set a course directly for The Bucket.

The Rust Bucket is the only other ship in the sky besides Imperials. In your haste to escape, you realize you’d just made a rather large target out of yourselves. 

The Bucket is fast, but the Imperials are faster, and built for long journeys. You can’t outrun them. You can’t outlast them. 

So you’ll have to out-maneuver them. 

You take another swig of grubjuice, and squint into the setting sun. It’s going to be a long night. 

 


	5. Flying and Falling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter betaed by muchlessvermillion <3

 

Aradia is trying on yet another red velvet monstrosity and looking annoyed with life. You aren’t exactly happy about life at the moment, either. You’ve been dealing with a headache all afternoon, which has only gotten worse the closer you got to the highblood ball. Impending doom.

Aradia has always teased you about your premonitions of doom, but honestly, this time you feel like there might be something to it. Something about tonight feels off, _wrong_ in a way you can’t put your finger on.

You really, really wish you weren’t going. More so than you usually feel.

It’s as if somewhere, beyond time and space, a great clock is ticking ever nearer to your doom. And tonight it will strike midnight.

You shift in your too-tight waistcoat and tailored trousers. They aren’t actually too tight, but since you much prefer the freedom of loose-fitting t-shirts and baggy jeans, something the rest of your caste regard with disgust, fancy clothes feel unnecessarily restrictive. Your _caste_ feels unnecessarily restrictive at times. At most times.

Your mentor will be there, tonight. She’ll be watching your every move. This is a big event. And you know you’ll have to at least try to make an effort.

What use is a Spymaster who gets migraines so bad that he can’t see straight, anyway?

Aradia seems to be picking up on your mood, in the way she does. You can see the tension in her shoulders, and the way she bites at her lip and furrows her brows in the mirror.

For a moment, just a moment, that image is overlaid with another: Aradia, bleeding from her nose and mouth, her eyes a milky white. Ruby blood sticky and vile on red velvet. Ruby blood spreading across the marble floor.

You shake your head to clear it, which sends a spike of pain lancing through your thinkpan. You fumble in your trouser pocket for your painkillers and pop four in your mouth at once, swallowing them dry.

Aradia watches you do it in her mirror, and a frown mars her pretty face.

“You still have that headache?” she asks.

You don’t see any point in lying, so you just shrug. “Yeah.”

There’s a long pause.

“You want to skip it tonight?” her voice is barely above a whisper.

“It” being the highblood political function masquerading as a party. But you both know that’s not something you can do.

“I’ll be fine, AA,” you lie.

Aradia catches your eye in the mirror. She knows you’re lying, but she lets it go.

In a rustle of red velvet and lace, she turns to look at you. “I’d offer to give you a hug, but…” she trails off, gesturing helplessly at the ridiculous getup she’s wearing. You don’t think you could get close enough to even give her a friendly pap on the cheek in that ruffled monstrosity of a hoop skirt Damara suggested she wear.

There’s a soft knock at the door. One of Aradia’s tealblood maids enters on quiet feet.

“Her Illustrious Incandescence requests your presence, Princess,” she says, bowing low enough that her nose practically touches the floor.

A bit of white is smeared across the back of the servant’s neck. It looks a bit like paint.

If you hadn’t been looking at just the right moment, you’d have missed it.

Your feeling of impending doom only intensifies.

Something about seeing a smear of greasepaint on the back of the teal’s neck sends a foreboding chill down your spinal column.

That clown cult is growing, and while they mostly constrain themselves to rowdy parties in the lowblood districts, lately their message has been spreading. Even into the middle and upper castes.

You send a glance to Aradia to see if she noticed, too. But she’s more preoccupied by straightening out her gown and checking her makeup in her hand mirror.

The teal rises and backs away, and Aradia straightens her shoulders and strides purposefully towards the door, using her telekinesis to levitate her ridiculously long train so it floats an inch off the floor, rather than dragging over it.

She only uses her powers like that when she’s about to see Damara.

You follow along after her, down echoing corridors made of white marble shot through with red-gold veins. The whole palace is ostentatious like that.

There’s a breeze blowing in from the east, bringing with it the rusty salt-tang of the sea. Underneath the familiar scent is something older and darker. Has it always been like that? You’ve never noticed it before.

That smell, more than anything else you’ve been feeling today, lately, in the last few weeks, intensifies your doom feeling a thousandfold.

 

*******

 

Her Illustrious Incandescence is sprawled inelegantly on a divan wearing only a thin green camisole, and nothing else. You sigh inwardly. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Sollux avert his gaze, a golden blush rising on his cheeks.

Your caste-sister is as notorious for trying to fluster everyone in the court as she is notorious for waiting until the last possible moment to get ready. You’ve overheard your maids whisper about it often enough, when they think you aren’t listening.

“You wished to see me?” you say, as decorum dictates.

She lazily rolls off the divan and saunters over towards you. She’s taller than you. She’s always been taller than you, something you’ve found very annoying over the years.

She stops in front of you and tilts her head to the side, considering.

“Little sister.”

You keep your face carefully neutral. You hate it when she calls you that.

“Yes?”

She gives you that look. The one where it’s like she’s staring through the fabric of your being, into your soul. You hate that look. It always sees too much.

You do not miss the way her eyes dart briefly to Sollux (whose gaze is still respectfully averted) and then back to you. She gives you a knowing smirk and you hate that, too.

“What do you want?” you snap.

“Is it too much to ask to see my little sister before a big event?” Damara says, her eyes wide.

You raise an eyebrow at that.

“All right, I just thought it would be a good idea to go over a few things before I let you loose in the viper pit,” Damara says, playing with a strand of her hair.

You roll your eyes this time. “I already know it all, Damara.”

“I know…” she trails off, chewing on her lip like she did when you were wrigglers, back when your oldest caste-sister was still planet-side.

You haven’t seen her look this vulnerable in sweeps, and it sends a wave of unease coursing through your blood.

She shakes her head slightly. “You’ll be alright,” she says. It’s more to herself than it is directed at you, though.

You’re very aware of the thick, expensive fabric weighing you down as you shift your weight. Suddenly the crown and all your jewels are too constricting, too heavy. Damara isn’t even wearing her crown, you notice.

“Is that all..?” you ask, when the silence stretches on too long.

Damara snaps out of her strange mood and draws herself up to her full height. “Don’t embarrass me, little sister.”

You stick your tongue out at her imperious tone and she snorts with laughter.

“No promises,” you tell her with a grin.  

You sweep out of the room and let Sollux stumble along awkwardly in your wake.

 

 

*******

 

 

There’s an electric crackle in the air, and not one brought on by so many psionics gathered in one room. Something else is afoot.

You cast a surreptitious glance at your mentor. Meliza is currently dressed in an obnoxiously bright yellow dress with about a million blue and red petticoats peeking out from beneath its many ruffles. She’s wearing her hair coiled atop her head in the latest fashion, with her branched horns sprouting out from the sides. She’s laughing at an undoubtedly terrible anecdote told by one of the Cavalreaper petty officers. She looks every inch a spoilt, vapid, rich goldblood.

Only Damara, Aradia, and you know better. And you only know because she chose you, out of all the other potential (and in your opinion much better qualified) candidates to be her successor. She’ll be leaving Carnelian and joining the ranks of the Grand High Empress in less than a sweep. Not her decision, but when the Empress calls, you answer, or it’s your blood spilling across the floor.

Meliza is a hide-in-plain-sight-and-play-dumb type. People see her pretty face and big eyes and don’t see the cunning in them. They let things slip. You, however, are a fade-into-the-background type. Different styles, but both equally valid.

She catches your eye across the room, fluttering her golden paper fan coquettishly in front of her face. There’s a brief moment where her gaze sharpens, and you know her well enough that you can tell there’s something amiss.

You scan the room carefully, taking in everything, parsing the useful information and discarding the extraneous.

The servants here tonight are teals and jades, mostly. Following an instinct that runs through your very core, you cast about for the teal maid from before. You don’t see her.

You do, however, notice something else that makes your blood go cold.

Most of the serving staff run in shifts throughout the night, that’s not unusual. What is unusual, is that not a single one currently on the floor is someone you recognize.

That is not normal.

You shuffle away from where you were holding up the wall, and make a meandering path towards the refreshment table.

You ladle some cold (and no doubt spiked) beetle punch into a cup and pretend to drink it. One sniff tells you that it is, indeed, full of alcohol.

A more thorough and but more surreptitious sniff doesn’t reveal any of the common poisons you’ve been trained to detect.

Not that that necessarily means it’s safe. It’s certainly highly alcoholic, for one thing. You are definitely not going to drink it, you need your wits about you tonight. From your vantage point at the refreshment table, you have a better view of the scene.

Aradia is dancing with the younger Nitram in a way that shouldn’t make jealousy boil in your veins but does.

Meliza has moved on to chat with another bronze, Dammek something-or-other, you’re not really sure, because the guy is kind of a douche and you make it a point to avoid him.

Damara is standing close to the older Nitram, Rufioh. He’s the Cavalreaper General, and has an impressive set of horns. He also has an impressive set of shoulders, and looks absolutely _amazing_ in uniform. You can’t really blame Damara for wanting a piece of that.

Then, several things happen all at once.  

The headache that has been threatening all night suddenly spikes hard enough that you nearly drop your drink. Across the room, Meliza snaps her fan shut, suddenly wary.

You notice something, just as you had earlier: beneath the smell of overly-perfumed bodies, sickly-sweet alcohol, and assorted savory delicacies, is something...older. Darker. Tinged with salt and seaweed and decay. It curls around your nose, insidious and rank, and you look down again at your drink.

Something dark and slimy drifts to the surface of the green punch. You throw it away from you in shock and disgust. Fortunately, no one notices your lapse in decorum because just at that moment, the double doors to the ballroom slam open.

A limeblood Threshecutioner wearing the sigil of the Vantas line bursts into the room. His uniform is singed and torn and there’s a streak of lime on his cheek and flowing from a wound on his forehead.

“The drones have gone rogue! They’re attacking everyone!” he shouts.

The room is deathly silent for several moments.

Then a wave of sound, like the buzzing of a thousand panicking bees, sweeps across the room. The guests are all murmuring to each other in confusion.

You, however, notice something else. When Vantas burst in, every serving-troll had stopped dead in their tracks, their faces gone slack and vacant.

A violet glow suffuses the eyes of the one nearest you.

Acting on instinct, you throw a psychic shield up around yourself.

There’s a scream from across the room and as one, every serving-troll drops their tray.

What happens next is a confusing whirlwind of noise and light. The lowblood trolls lash out with purple psionics in a concerted effort. Shattering glass and blood-curdling screams tear through the air and the room is filled with the crackle of psionics as a fight breaks out in earnest.

You cast around for Aradia and feel a wave of relief as you spot her. She’s created a circle of telekinetic force around herself.

Damara and Rufioh have vanished. You see Tavros Nitram taking on one of the tealblood servers using his rapier and a discarded tray for a shield. Vantas is lashing out with his sickle and shouting obscenities. Meliza’s hair has come loose from her updo and her horns are crackling with power.

Just then, one of the towering pillars lining the ballroom cracks right up the middle, and with a great, groaning clatter of stone, crumbles to the ground. Right on top of Aradia. 

You almost miss one of the rogue lowbloods charging right for you, knife drawn. You wrap your psionics around him and fling him behind you, and you vaguely register the wooden crunch of the refreshment table collapsing.

Aradia's telekinetic shields held, but she's surrounded by giant blocks of shattered granite. A small trickle of red blood runs from her nose. 

You're forcibly reminded of your vision from earlier. 

Every other thought has vanished from your mind. You push through server and guest alike in your single-minded need to reach her.  

 

*******

 

A beam of psionic light passes by you, so close you feel the charge raising your hair. You lash out with your telekinesis and knock the wall of debris away. There’s a tell-tale jolt of pain behind your eyes, and you know you’ll have a reaction headache in the morning.

If you make it to morning, that is.

Right now, you’re focused on keeping yourself and Sollux alive. You spare a quick glance at your moirail. He’s still throwing psychic blasts around like there’s no tomorrow. There might not be a tomorrow. You try not to think about it.

One of the tealblood servants rushes you, but you push her away. It’s too hard to tell who’s friend and who’s foe in the chaos, and you’re not about to trust anyone other than Sollux.

Across the room, Meliza Cathrk is practically glowing with green light. Her psionic abilities use her horns as a focus, and even from here, you can see that one of hers has shattered.

Damara and Rufioh are nowhere to be seen. You try not to think about that, either.

There’s a great rumbling from below. The floor shakes like there’s been a tectonic plate shift, and cracks form along the soot-blasted marble. One of the pillars topples over with a crash, and a section of wall goes with it.

Beneath, you can see the glass of the original tower. It’s glowing with an iridescent light, reminding you, bizarrely, of a gigantic solar crystal. You’ve never seen anything like that before.

But there’s no time to ponder that, because an oliveblood server, whom you vaguely remember, calls out to you.

“Are you okay, Princess?” he shouts, over yet another blast.

A friendly face at last! You wave him over, and let him through the barrier your telekinesis makes.

“I’m okay,” you say.

He flashes his fangs in a grin. “Good.”

But as he gets closer, you can see there’s something off. His eyes are glowing with an unearthly purple light. Olives don’t usually develop psychic powers. You feel a trickle of foreboding, which turns into a stream the second you spot him reaching into his waistcoat.

Quick as a flash, he pulls free a dagger, and hurls it right at you.

You deflect that, too, and lash out with your telekinesis, probably harder than necessary. The server impacts the crumbling marble wall and leaves a streak of olive in his wake.

Sollux is still engaged in a battle with another psionic. This one is a blue. That’s even more rare than a psychic olive. What is going on?

There’s another great crash from across the room. Another wall has caved in, revealing more shining crystal. From the ruined doorway, a stream of trolls, all with the same glowing violet eyes, and armed to the teeth with weapons, pours in.

In the chaos, you can’t tell who’s fighting who, and for what reasons. Your species being what they are, it’s entirely possible some of them are fighting for the sake of fighting.

An anguished scream reverberates across the room. Meliza stands at the far end of the great hall, bleeding from her eyes, nose, and mouth. Her horns have been reduced to nothing but smoking stumps. The green light of her psionics dies, and only then do you notice there’s a dagger protruding from her chest.

Your scream is lost as she crumples to the ground, a wave of trolls washing over her.

Sollux is screaming, too. A streak of gold blood dribbles down from his nostril as he sends blasts wildly into the crowd.

He’s on the verge of burnout.

You stand, bits of velvet and taffeta fall away as you walk, calmly as possible, and wrap your arms around Sollux from behind.

Your touch grounds him, and he sags. The blue and red light of his powers give one last hurrah and take all the lights with them when they go out. The only illumination is from the glass-crystal tower.

The darkness grants only a momentary reprieve, and you bodily drag Sollux away. You are not going to think about Meliza. You are not going to think about Damara, or Rufioh. You are going to get your moirail out of here.

He’s light, much lighter than he should be. But then again, you’re on the verge of panic, so it’s possible that your strength is increased from adrenaline.  

He comes to after a split second. You turn him around and take a good look into his eyes.

The madness flickers away and leaves only his usual red and blue.

“We have to get out of here,” you tell him, needlessly.

Of course you have to get out of here. You give him a tug and he snaps out of his daze.

“Wha—,” he starts, blinking in confusion.

“This way,” you say, pulling him towards one of the hallways.

A strange look passes over his face. “No, AA, we need to go this way,” he says, and steers you in the opposite direction. Towards one of the staircases.

Instead of taking it, he moves aside a tapestry (a hideous thing depicting Damara riding a dragon), revealing a small door.

There’s a moment, just a moment, when you stop. You trust Sollux with your life. But there is a moment where you doubt.

“C’mon, AA.”

Another crash sounds from the grand ballroom.

That makes up your mind. The doubt passes like a rainstorm over the sea. You nod, once, and follow him into the passageway.

 

 

*******

You feel like you’ve been walking for ages. The walls were built around the glass crystal where it couldn’t be easily incorporated into the design of the palace. This particular passageway runs right along the side of the crystal. A long, narrow, winding staircase built of dark stone with one wall of glass.

It’s still glowing.

Now that you’re away from the fight, the adrenaline is fading fast. You’re bone-tired and there’s a sensitive spot in that place in your thinkpan where you overexerted your powers. Your eyes burn.

The image of Meliza, horns shattered, burnt out, and with a dagger protruding from her chest rises up in your mind, unbidden, and you force it back down. There’s no time at all for grief, right now.

Your objective is to get Aradia somewhere safe.

The passageway is one you’ve known about for a while; originally it was a servant’s staircase, bypassing most of the intermediate floors and going directly to the respiteblocks of the royals.

At some point it fell out of use, and the current crop of servants didn’t use it. Which works out well for you, as now you’re not likely to meet anyone else on it.

The crystal wall to your right glows brighter than you’ve ever seen it.

You’ve long known that it lit up like a twelfth perigee’s eve botanical ornament rack whenever it was hit with psionic power, but this, this is new.

Aradia follows behind you like a ghost. She occasionally stops and examines the sheer crystalline face of the glass wall, and you feel the tug of her telekinesis running over it.

She’s been quiet, but then again, so have you. You’re focused on getting away. Everything happened so fast, it was hard to put the pieces together.

She’s probably worried about Damara. Hell, you’re worried about Damara.

You’re worried that Damara is dead, and Aradia would be next.

You’re worried that you were set up. You’re worried about the fact a revolt happened because spies were planted underneath your nose.

You’re worried about a lot of things at the moment.

Not the least of which involves what to do next. You don’t really have a plan, you’re running on instinct. Granted, your instincts have never failed you before, but there’s a first time for everything.

Now your instincts are telling you to go up.

So up you go.

Aradia isn’t questioning you, and honestly, you wish she would.

No one should have that much trust in you.  

This silence is eerie and unnerving.

At last, you reach the end of the passageway. Your legs are sore from climbing, and your head is sore from fighting, and your pusher is sore from repressed grief.

The end of the passage is a plain, small door that you know from previous experience looks like a portrait of a rampant horned hoofbeast fighting a cholerbear.

You reach out and cautiously crack the door open. There’s no one around. You push the door further and motion Aradia through, leaving the glowing crystal walls behind.

You’re near the royal suites, just as you knew you would be.

Aradia, however, seems surprised that this one exists. She knows of a few others, but none that go from the main floor all the way up to the royal levels. The whole palace is riddled with passages, and as future Spymaster (if there even is a future for you), you need to know them all. Meliza had drilled that into your thinkpan from the beginning.

You firmly push thoughts of Meliza down. Escape now, grieve later.

“Sollux, do you have a plan?” Aradia says, it’s more of a whisper. She looks as lost as you feel.

You shoot Aradia a weak grin. Judging from her expression, it’s more of a grimace.

“Not die?”

Aradia gives you A Look. “That’s not a very good plan.”

“Do you have a better one?”

That awful lost look is back. “No,” she admits.

You really don’t have a plan. You’ve just been running on instinct since the moment you noticed none of the servants were ones you recognized.

Moving is better than standing around like a pair of idiots, so you curl your fingers around Aradia’s hand and nod your head in the direction of her rooms.

Another gigantic, bone-rattling blast shakes the foundations of the palace. You have no idea what’s going on. Maybe it’s the end of the world? Maybe you both are just running on borrowed time, delaying the inevitable.

You don’t know, but by unspoken agreement, you pick up your pace.

The corridors are deserted, and the lights are out. In your current state, even the shadows seem to menace you. Your footsteps are too loud in the unnatural quiet, echoing strangely and coming back all distorted.

You’re still about ten paces from the doorway to Aradia’s respiteblock suite when the echoing of your footsteps multiplies tenfold.

A glance behind you reveals about half a dozen trolls, all with those glowing purple eyes, moving in horrible synchronization right towards you.

You reach for your psionics, but the place in your pan where they are is too sore. Pain, hot and blinding, jolts through you and you cry out, involuntarily, like a grub looking for its lusus.

But Aradia shoves you behind her, and lashes out with her telekinesis. The trolls are swept off their feet and pushed back down the corridor by an invisible force.

Sometimes you forget just how strong a rubyblood can be.

This time, Aradia is the one to grab you, and you run the last few paces to her rooms.

She slams the doors shut behind you, bolting them in place. She shifts the side table over to block the door for good measure.

That’s not going to be enough, but it might hold them off long enough to come up with a plan.

...Or not, as the panel in the wall that hides the secret passage is blown off, and more trolls with glowing eyes issue through.

Fuck.

“Fuck,” Aradia says, echoing your thought.

You’re still out of commission, as the pain in your thinkpan can attest. There’s a grittiness to your eyes and around your nose, which means you were starting to bleed. It’s a good thing you stopped when you did, or you could’ve blown out your eyes.

Aradia strides forward and lifts her arms. The giant recuperacoon comes free of the floor with a groaning crack, and blue sopor slops out of it as she telekinetically hurls it into the crowd of trolls.

There’s a pounding on the double doors behind you. A quick glance shows that psionic light bleeds around the edges of the doors. They won’t hold for long.

That must’ve been too much for her, because the backlash knocks her down. The tiles crack all around her. Without even thinking, you rush forward and help her up.

She gives you a strange, unreadable look. And then she’s hooking her claws into your hair and pulling your head down.

Your lips meet in a concupiscent clash of fangs that’s not pitch at all, but definitely not pale, either. You pull back, your mind utterly blank. Aradia looks just as shocked as you do.

You stare at each other for half a moment before breaking into a run as the bloodthirsty revolt rages behind you.

There are no other ways out. Enemies block both exits.

Except one.

The archway leading to the balcony beckons you with gauzy fluttering curtains.

Something in your pan is telling you to go, now. Just go and keep running.

You and Aradia make your stumbling way towards the balcony, an angry mob at your heels. The air crackles around you as foreign psionics lash at you both.

The wind picks up, coming off the sea. That deep, dark, old smell is back, but this time it smells like freedom. Like a second chance.

You are all about second chances.

You reach the balcony. The night sky glitters above you in a confusion of stars and moons.

The low railing looms ahead. You’re nine stories up over a sheer drop. You are both too burnt out to handle flying in your current states.

Aradia’s hand squeezes yours. A wordless acknowledgement.

You reach the edge of the balcony…

...And keep running.

For a glorious moment, you’re suspended over the air, and it’s like flying.

Your combined powers flicker around you; a defense mechanism.

They don’t do much, and pain blooms behind your eyes.

And then, it’s horribly like falling as your abilities give out.

 


	6. The End of the Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The comic in this chapter is by escaflowery!
> 
> This chapter was betaed by muchlessvermillion <3

 

Eridan swerves the  _ Bucket _ around yet another obstacle. The other airships are gaining, but they’re clunky, ancient empire-issue ones that aren’t meant for manual steering and don’t have the same maneuverability that The Bucket has.  

They also don’t have Eridan at the wheel. Not that you’d ever tell him that, his head is big enough as it is. 

Equius is hanging on for dear life to the mainmast. He’s clutching it hard enough that you can see splinters around his arms. You make a mental note to make Eridan add a sheet of steel around the base later if he’s going to keep doing that. 

You, however, are absolutely  _ living _ . 

The wind races along your gills and cards wicked fingers through your hair and whistles around your horns. Being chased makes you feel alive in a way that all the salt water in the world can’t. 

The Palace looms in front of you. It’s so close you could practically reach out and touch it. The glass crystal towers are glowing; there’s some kind of commotion happening down below. You, however, are too concerned with what’s happening in the air to pay much attention to anything on the ground. 

Eridan takes another sharp corner and everything that hasn’t been bolted down—coils of rope and various tools and boxes—slides to one side. Equius looks strangely green for a blueblood. You let out a laugh of pure joy, clinging to the rigging above the forecastle, and pull the blunderbuss Eridan loaned you from its makeshift holster in your sash.

You toss a look back towards Eridan, and he nods, grinning a rather bloodthirsty grin. 

The  _ Bucket  _ swings around and it’s now side-to-side with one of the Imperials chasing you. 

You take aim and shoot.

The bullet hits its mark: the balloon of the Imperial. Like the  _ Bucket _ , Imperial airship balloons have many compartments, so one little hole alone isn’t going to bring it down. 

It does, however, distract them long enough that they leave a clear path to your real target: the ship’s topside boiler. You take aim and shoot again. Your aim is true, and you think that Eridan will be pleased at how you’ve improved. The bullet impacts the side of their boiler with a loud clang. 

You motion to Eridan to bring the ship up, and he does. Just in time, because the boiler on the Imperial fails catastrophically, and you hear screaming as the pressure of all that steam is released in a chain reaction that sounds like a continuous roar of thunder. 

The Imperial loses altitude quickly, and you let out one last laugh into the cold wind before clambering down. 

Equius is staring at you in horror. 

“Oh, don’t worry about them,” you tell him. “All those Imperials have a psionic or two on board who will keep them from crashing completely.” 

You cast a look over the side. And true to your word, the Imperial is enveloped in a purple-orange light, and it slows its descent. 

Then you give him a wink, because you can. “You’re cute when you’re scared.” 

That causes a rush of blue to his face and you turn away, pleased with yourself. 

You’re just heading back towards where Eridan is at the helm when there’s a sharp crack and The Bucket gives a great shuddering heave. 

“Somethin’ hit us, Fef!” Eridan shouts over the wind. 

You rush back to the prow to see if you can see anything. 

Then, several things happen all at once: there’s a sizzling crackle that can only be psionics, a huge FWUMP of something hitting the balloon, and the unmistakable sound of tearing silk. 

“Fuck,” you say, as a cloth-wrapped bundle lands with a THUMP on the deck, not even a meter away from Equius, who pulls back in surprise. 

For a moment, no one moves. 

Then, the bundle of cloth sprouts an arm. 

An arm that’s bedecked in red velvet, gold, and rubies. 

You’ve pulled your knife without even realizing it. 

The fabric is shoved away to reveal two trolls. One, a tall, lanky fellow with a double set of horns and wearing some ridiculously fine, if incredibly tacky, clothing, and a pair of spectacles with blue and red lenses. There’s a streak of yellow blood crusting around his nose. 

The other troll, and the one belonging to the red velvet arm, has long, messy hair, curved horns, a red gown that probably costs more than you make in a year, and, most alarmingly, a rivulet of ruby red blood streaming from a cut on her cheek. 

There are only two trolls on the entire planet with red blood. The Queen and the Princess. 

And if you’re not mistaken, you’ve just had Princess Aradia crash land onto your ship. 

 

*******

 

Your pan hurts. 

Your everything hurts, as a matter of fact. But you suppose that’s a good sign; it means you’re alive. 

The fabric wrapped around you like a burial shroud constricts, and you nearly tear it in your panic to escape. You fight your way free of the whatever-it-is and the first thing that comes to mind is to check on Sollux. 

He’s right beside you—still holding your hand, as a matter of fact—and he lets out a pained groan. Also a good sign. 

Your first thought is that you’d landed in some kind of rusty tin can. 

Your second thought is that there are three very unfriendly-looking lowbloods staring at you in shock. Two of them—seadwellers, judging by their fins—are holding weapons aimed directly at you. 

The one with the knife (and is she really a fuschia? You’ve never seen one in the wild before!) has long hair and a pair of horns that curve gracefully up and away from her head. She’s wearing rags, and looking altogether like a feral. Except you can see the intelligence glimmering behind her pink goggles, and you know this is someone you don’t want to get on the wrong side of. 

The one with the gun has horns that are almost lightning-shaped and a streak of violet in his hair. His clothes are worn but obviously well-cared for. 

The third troll (and by all the moons, you really, really hope that there are only three) appears to be a blueblood, with dark goggles obscuring his eyes and one of his horns cracked off. The other horn is shaped a bit like an arrow. Of them, he’s the only one who doesn’t look like he’s about to murder you both. 

There’s a moment where the five of you are frozen in place, as if the universe itself stops, and all sound recedes, and all that’s left in the world is the five of you. 

You blink, and the moment passes. 

Sollux is gripping your hand so hard you’re sure it’ll bruise. Right now, things aren’t looking so great. You both have exhausted your powers and are on the verge of complete psychic burnout. 

There’s absolutely no way that these three don’t recognize you. You’re rather conspicuous. 

“Y-your Highness?” 

The blue one breaks the silence first. The tension of the moment snaps like a rubber band. He’s staring at you, completely aghast. 

“Um. Yes,” you say, since there is no denying it at this point. “How uh...are you? Is everything...good?” 

 

You grimace at your own words. You sound like Tavros with all those “um”s and “uh”s.  

Nervously, you smooth your hands down over your skirt, which is nothing but tatters right now. A ruby catches the light and you wonder if there’s any chance these three will let you live. Maybe if you trade them all your jewelry? 

The irony that you and Sollux had jumped blindly to escape an uprising, trusting to fate, or maybe Serendipity, to guide you where it would, only to wind up landing directly on an airship no doubt belonging to those very same revolutionaries, was not lost on you. 

You glance over to Sollux, who’s now sitting up, fully alert, with his psionics sparking weakly from his eyes. He’s still holding your hand. It’s comforting. 

You are a rubyblood, a member of the highest caste in the Alternian empire. You are a princess of Carnelian. You will not beg for your life. So you straighten your back, drawing yourself up as regally as possible. 

If you are to die, you will die with your head held high.

The fuschia exchanges a look with the violet and a wordless understanding passes between them. The violet nods, and lowers his weapon. The fuschia lowers her knives, too. 

The blue didn’t appear to be armed. Or at least, he hadn’t drawn a weapon. In fact, he’d been clutching at the central mast of the ship the entire time. There’s an indentation where his arms had circled it. 

The fuschia steps forward, her knives are sheathed in her belt, but you’re not taking any chances. 

She holds out  her hand. “I’m Feferi Peixes, and this is the good ship the _Rust Bucket_.” 

You’re a little taken aback at the lewd name, but paradoxically, it puts you more at ease to see the clear unholy glee on her face as she introduced the name of the ship. The violet rolls his eyes at that, and the blue just looks horrified. 

You match her grin with one of your own. “I’m Aradia Megido, and I think you just saved my life.”

This might be an unexpected turn, but it also promises to be exciting. 

 

*******END PART ONE*******

 


End file.
